Home Screen Breakdown 2018

Here is a screenshot of my current home screen:

This article will mostly focus on the actual apps on my home screen and what I use them for. If you’re interested in the some of the particulars about why I lay it out this way please check out this article.

The Dock

Let’s start with the most important part: my most used apps. On my dock you’ll find the following three apps:

I just started trying this email app out today. I go into just why it’s important to have an amazing email client here. I have been using Airmail, but this app recently came to my attention and I’m always looking for the best email app so I decided to try it out. So far I really like it, but I’m not sure I’ll stick with it since there doesn’t seem to be a version for macOS, and having cross-platform functionality is very important to me.

This app is amazing for speeding up my daily tasks. LCP is really great for high level actions like “open this app” or “message this contact”. My more in-depth actions like OmniFocus Templates are run through the app Workflow, however I import the Workflow shortcuts into LCP because I like LCP’s UI much better (Workflow looks a bit clunky in my opinion.

Folders

I only have four folders, but they hold every app that isn’t on my home screen. All folders only have three apps on their front page, this is a purely aesthetic choice. Just like I don’t like my actual home screen filled with apps, I don’t want the front page of my folders filled with them either. All of the folders also have a purpose. Starting from the left and going to the right:
The first folder is sort of a catch-all folder. This folder doesn’t have a theme like my other three do. When sorting apps, first priority goes to any other folder, but if it doesn’t fit into one of those the app will be put into this first folder. The three apps on the front page of this folder are “Messenger”, “App Store”, and “Facebook Page”.
The second folder is my “Health” folder. It holds apps like “Watch”, “Pillow” (my sleep tracker app), and “Daily Yoga”. Any app that pertains to staying healthy goes into this folder.The third folder is my “Finance” Folder. The three apps on the front page are “Venmo”, “Robinhood”, and “PayPal”.
The final folder is my “Games” Folder. The three apps on the front page are “∞ Infinity Loop: Energy”, “Ballz”, and “Artificial Superintelligence”.

One thing worth noting, as I mentioned in my “Cleaning Up Your Home Screen” article, is that I almost never actually open the folders. I keep my most used apps in the folder on the front page, because sometimes that’s quicker than spotlight search, but more often than not, if it’s in a folder, I will just use spotlight search instead of opening the folder.

Settings - mostly used for wifi and bluetooth things. Making sure my device is connected to the things it should be connected to.

Fantastical - This is my calendar app. I prefer this to the stock calendar app primarily because of the UI and also because of the way you add events. It allows you to add events by typing in the way you would speak. It’s all very natural.

2Do - This is the app where I add things that need to get done but aren’t incredibly important. If you’re interested in reading more about that, take a look at the article I linked to above.

OmniFocus - This is where all of my important (typically job-related) tasks go. Again, I’m not going to go too far into this since I’ve already written about it in the article I linked to above.

Second row of apps. This is where the style of organization changes. This row and the next are organized by color instead of what the app does. This is my row of (mostly) blue apps:

Apollo - My reddit client. Infinitely better than than the official reddit app, and miles ahead of any other reddit app I’ve tried. The dark mode is to die for.

PCalc - My replacement for the stock calculator app. It’s a full-featured calculator, and it comes with one of my favorite features: the ability to change the app icon (something Apollo also lets you do).

Google - Probably the least used app on my home screen. This is an app that just google searches things.

Notes - I use Notes as an idea or information catcher. If I’m out and about and there is some sort of (non-urgent) information that I need to keep track of (new contact, book I want to read, etc.) I’ll throw it into notes because it’s easier than finding the correct app in the moment. At the end of the day I go through my notes app and move things to more permanent places based on the type of information that’s saved in the notes.

Order of the Rows

Top Row: On the iPhone X the top is very hard to reach, and since I rarely actually use my folders I have them in the top row.

First row of apps: Most of my tasks and events are repeating, so while I rely heavily on this row, I don’t actually open the apps very much unless I’m checking information that Past Me put into the app or checking off a task I’ve completed. So again, a bit farther up in the hard-to-reach section.

Last two rows: Organized by color, I have the cooler tones higher than the warmer tones because it blends better with the wallpaper.